CORDLESS RADAR DETECTOR

"I figure nobody needs another energy crisis."

There's
no cordless version of V1

It's possible to run a radar detector on two throw away
AAs, but you have to give up any hope of high performance.

Performance takes power.
There's no getting around the physics of it. Batteries
are weak sources of power. That's why electric cars
use battery packs weighing hundreds of pounds, yet
few of them can top 100 miles without recharging.

Laptop computers have very expensive batteries — quite
heavy, too — yet they're lucky to run two hours
on a charge.

A radar detector operates like a sentry making its rounds.
If the territory is small, then he can watch carefully
and often. Expand the territory and he has time
for only quick glances. When "superwide Ka"
radar guns came on the scene a few years back, the
microwave territory a radar detector has to watch
was expanded more than 1000 percent, compared to
the good old days of X and K bands only. Now the
sentry needs powerful circuits.

"SOLO
S2 uses only a fraction of the power used by conventional
corded detectors,"
claims the maker's website.

Uh-oh, here comes the energy crisis.

The SOLO S2's "High-Efficiency Power Management"
is hardly rocket surgery. It saves the two AAs by
putting the sentry to sleep more than 85 percent
of the time. It just switches off the power-using
detector circuitry.

A sleeping sentry can't possibly give early warning when radar
is used in the instant-on mode. And it gives up
all hope of detecting the POP mode.

Sure, a cordless detector would be convenient. And
I'll be out in the lab cooking one up as soon as
the laws of physics are repealed.